I went on a vacation a couple of weeks ago and though I was very excited about the prospect of being at the beach for a week, I was having mixed feelings at the same time. This was due to the fact that I had just received my copy of GTA IV a couple of days before we were set to leave for the beach. I did have a chance to play – believe me, I took every chance I could get – but that was not enough to whet my appetite. I was mulling over the possibilities and came up with three:

-Postpone the trip.
-Take my PS3 with me.
-Forget about gaming for a while.

The second option was very very tempting. Until I realized that I had to take a ferry boat to the island and I didn’t really want to risk damaging the console. So option 3 it had to be.

It was not that bad, really. During the first day, I would think about gaming every now and then and wish fervently that I was at home in front of the TV. Those moments became rarer and rarer until they were totally gone by the 3rd day. However, when the 5th day came around, I was itching to play so badly I just couldn’t wait for the ferry boat to arrive.

So I guess that’s my figure – 5 days without gaming. I survived – and no scars to show for it. How about you, how long can you go without gaming?

I never thought that someone would name their child Wii but I have been wrong before, and I am wrong now. There is, in fact, a guy named Wii and he got his name way before the Wii (console) was conceptualized. Wii Yatani is a 26-year-old graphic artist from Manhattan. No, it is not a nickname. It is in fact his birth name.

Did he have anything to do with Nintendo’s naming their gaming console? Not in the least. In fact, Nintendo probably did not know he existed until he contacted them to be their spokesperson. Even then, the company did not pay him any mind, which, I think, is just rude. If I were part of Nintendo’s PR department, I would have capitalized on the coincidence. It’s not like Wii (Yatani) would be detrimental to the company, right?

Anyhow, just imagine how the salesperson at the store reacted when she saw Wii’s name on his credit when he paid for his own Wii a couple of months ago! I would have loved to be that salesperson! Of course, Wii (the man) has gotten used to all the jokes his friends would make about his name all his life. Then again, with the advent of the Wii (the console), he has new jokes to contend with. Here’s an excerpt from the article where I discovered Yatani:

And they’ve given him the ability to introduce himself in a new way: “Now, when I meet people I say, ‘My name is Wii. I’m the original.’ ”

Yatani gets new jokes now too. His friends ask him: “Oh, Wii, are you going to go home to play with yourself?” Laughing, he said he gets that “all the time now.”

Lucky man!

Tags: Wii

A headline at the Telegraph’s web site caught my eye a few minutes ago. It read “Boy learned to drive from video games before stealing family car-
A nine-year-old Japanese schoolboy who learnt how to drive from playing video games has used his motoring skills to steal the family car and set off on a 1.8 mile journey to visit his grandmother.”

Now I know that this kind of news will certainly cause a stir in the video gamer sector. I myself cannot help but get a little bit riled up each time the media points to video games as the cause behind various violent or errant behavior. So, I won’t even go into that. What I want to focus on right now is whether or not you can actually learn skills such as driving by simply playing video games.

There are many arcade games which function as simulators. You actually hold a steering wheel in your hands and place your feet on pedals. There are even games which have real life gear shifts. In effect, it would seem that you are actually driving. I do not know how accurate the experience is as compared to the driving simulators that researchers use but I suppose it is a pretty close thing.

Now I will go out on a limb and say that yes, you can learn these skills by playing video games. Well, at least the rudimentary skills. As for the implications of this, I will not venture into that. Any thoughts?

Tags: arcade, driving

Have you ever heard of this genre of games? H-games. I wonder what H stands for? Hero? Heroine? Heck? Hell?

I can’t believe that I haven’t really heard of this term before. In fact, I just found out about the specifics today, when I read this feature article at Got Game. It details the genre:

…a genre of video game that doesn’t often find much coverage in the media, despite its significant role in the industry: The H-game. Also known as eroge (short for “erotic games”), the genre recently caught some heat and now we’re feeling a little more guilty about ourselves.

Ahh, let me correct myself. I know about hentai, I just didn’t know the term H-game. In any case, this genre has gotten some attention lately, due to the violent nature of the games. I am not really against violent games – I play them. But the concepts in some of these H-games are quite beyond my normal scope. Take for example RapeLay, which Amazon banned:

The object of the game is to stalk and rape young women. In the event that one of the women becomes pregnant from the encounter, the player must then force her to have an abortion so that he may escape the natural consequences of his actions.

There are other titles in this genre which run along the same lines. I don’t want to sound judgmental but I don’t think that these kinds of games would help the already beleaguered industry. What do you think?

Tags: h-games, hentai